


room

by lookingfordonut



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, ILY, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Pining, Seijou, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Build, a lot of triggers for anyone who's suffered from serious self-esteem issues so watch out folks, be safe and gentle with yourselves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-30 03:33:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingfordonut/pseuds/lookingfordonut
Summary: Hajime notices Tooru doesn't like changing in public and something in his gut tells him he needs to understand why.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> self esteem is hard and anxiety makes it even harder. tooru and i can attest.

Hajime notices it for the first time when Tooru is late to practice.

Rushing in, one arm full of books, hair just _slightly_ in a disarray (nothing too bad, of course, or fans would notice), Oikawa launches himself through the door like a hurricane.

Usually, Tooru is the first to be changed— before anyone has even arrived at the clubroom, he’s on the court— so, late as he was in that moment, Hajime realizes he's not sure he's ever seen Tooru get changed before. Not since? What was it, Kitagawa Daichi? First year? Had he ever in public, in high school...?

It would be the first.

Or. Well. So he thought it would.

Hajime watches out of the corner of his eye as a (barely noticeable, just a glean in his eye) panicked Oikawa pulls out his volleyball uniformed and edges towards the toilets.

“Oi,” Hajime pokes. “Where’re you going?”

A flip is switched somewhere in Oikawa’s weird-ass brain and ~ _Oikawa-sama~_ comes out.

“Oh- _ho_ , Iwa-chan! Want to see your beloved captain in the nude? Don’t worry, don’t worry! It’s a pretty common goal! Everyone wants to gaze upon Oikawa-sama’s glorious, bodacious—”

He lets him go.

That time.

But as the pattern develops— Tooru is late here and there after all, he is human— Hajime realizes there will always be some excuse, some reason, for the captain to slip away into the restrooms and change there. Then he meets them some minutes later, beaming like nothing had happened, on the court.

He thinks its because Tooru might be body shy, despite his grandeur. But Tooru is…well, _Tooru_ so how could that be? He doesn’t want to prod because he respects privacy (unlike some people he could mention) but something about this itches Hajime’s _hen-mode_ , as Hanamaki would call it.

A few weeks later, when the restrooms are all closed for the plumbers after school _and_ Tooru is late, Hajime already, somewhere deep in his gut, feels what is coming.

Tooru bursts in, red-faced. “Will I ever get a break from math? Will the Sun one day burn out? Are the stars made of us or are we made of them? These are the great mysteries, Kunimi-chan, are you listening, you should be listening immediately—”

He drops his bag into his locker and starts pulling out his uniform. His eyes finally land on the bathroom’s large _CLOSED FOR REPAIRS_ sign and something in his face goes pale.

The din of the clubroom goes quiet in his ears. The sunlight seems to pass away, shrunk behind the shadows that suddenly appear under Tooru’s eyes— but, for once, it’s not in anger but—

_Fear?_

Hajime forgets sometimes that Tooru, still somehow marked under layers and layers of memories as _Tooru who jumped off the tallest tree near the pond_ , experiences fear.

The door opens and the door closes but there are a few people still left in the room. And Hajime watches his best friend take them in, his eyes racing, thoughts gleaming, wet and anxious and Hajime has barely a chance to ask himself why when—

“ _Awww_ ,” comes a whine. Tooru fake staggers to Kunimi, before draping himself dramatically across the smaller first year’s back. “Kunimi-chan, support your senpai. He’s feeling so much _pain_ today, Kunimi-chan, really.”

Kunimi slips out from under him with the sleekness of a cat and cracks the tiniest of smirks when Oikawa falls to the floor. Fringe in his face, Tooru lets out a cross-eyed huff that blows it up and (it’s not cute, definitely, definitely not cute) then, “Kunimi-chan, how rude. I should make you do extra laps for that.”

Kunimi, mutant ninja that he is, is deeply unfazed by threats of exercise despite his demeanor. “Of course, senpai.”

“And extra push ups!”

“Yes, senpai.”

“Five laps! Five extra!”

Kunimi leaves the clubroom with ten extra laps and forty extra pushups by the time Iwaizumi makes his way over. “What’re you doing on the floor, Shittykawa?”

Tooru lets out a whine. “Iwa-chan, my tummy is hurting. Tell the coach I’ll be out in twenty, I’m taking a medicine to help.”

Hajime’s lying senses are too good not to see through that. “Mmhm. Okay. Take it.”

“Huh?”

“Take the pill.”

“Ah— I’ve— left it in my locker. So I’ll just go grab it and come back. You go ahead.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“To my locker?” Tooru’s eyes shift.

“To your locker. And back here.”

Then they harden. “Why?”

The clubroom at this point is empty but for the two of them. That means no one is around to witness the subtle shift in the air, the tension that tightens the atmosphere. Tooru is turned back around, fiddling with something in his bag and Hajime has crossed his arms, staring unblinkingly at the back of Oikawa’s head. He does not respond to Oikawa’s question.

“Why?” Tooru meets his eyes when he asks it this time. “Go to the gym. Coach is waiting for one of us to come so practice can start.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t deign Tooru’s shallow deflections with a response. He just keeps staring at his best friend’s face, trying to figure out what he missed. He thinks he has every expression down, every bad habit, every smile, every strange fickle emotional response calculated and yet—he must have misattributed something because now there’s this whole sequence of behavior he doesn’t understand and—

“Iwa-chan.” This was his _Tobio_ voice now: a thin veneer of affection with a thick serving of resentment.

“Why don’t you like to change with the rest of us?”

Hajime knows his question is pushing boundaries. He knows ultimately he’d never push for Oikawa to feel uncomfortable in _any_ way about his personal space and body if it wasn’t for— this _feeling_ — his _gut_ telling him that there was something deeper and darker than privacy and shyness to this.

Tooru is at this point standing in front of him, close enough that the full five centimeter difference had him craning back his neck a little bit. When ice completely hardens Tooru’s face, freezing out any real traces of emotion, he breathes: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Hajime snorts. “Good one. What’s bothering you, Oikawa? I’m serious right now. I saw your face when you saw the _closed for repairs_ sign. I see your face every time you’re late. What gives?”

Something flicker in the back of Tooru’s expression. His voice is flat, empty, (terrifying), when he says: “Isn’t this awfully rude and personal for someone who values personal space so much?”

Hajime’s heart wrenches just a little at that. Because, yes, he’s feeling a bit guilty just in case this is a line he wasn’t meant to cross but his— gut— so, he says, “Look me in the eye right now and tell me you just don’t feel comfortable, for your own reasons. I’ll never bother you about this again and I’ll never let anyone else bother you either.”

Tooru tries to cover it up but he starts at Hajime’s sudden ultimatum. It is the smallest of flinches but Hajime sees it.

He doesn’t meet his eyes. But, like a storm under his skin, Hajime sees the tantrum brewing.

Tooru’s antagonistic nature is about to get the better of him and they both know it.

A moment passes and then, venomous as a snake, Tooru spits out, “I don’t have to explain this to anyone. _Anyone_.” He grabs at his bag, suddenly moved by his emotion, and, “I’m going home. Tell Coach.”

“Like hell you are.” Iwaizumi still hasn’t moved an inch but something behind his eyes is on fire now. He would get this out of Tooru if he had to hold him over the Bandai Bridge and shake it out of him, upside down.

Tooru gets so close that Hajime can see every fleck of brown in his eyes. His expression is downright terrifying, twisted and angry and pained in all the ways that make Hajime want to smooth it out with his thumbs but—

“Why don’t _you_ tell me what this is about, huh, Hajime?” Tooru is too close now. Close enough that Hajime can smell the mint in his breath and the lemon under his tongue. “You think I don’t notice? You think I don’t _see_ it?” Tooru laughs a high vicious laugh and the pit of Hajime’s stomach falls out. “Got a special reason you want to see your captain undressing, Iwaizumi-san? Maybe you’ll finally be joining my fan club? With your _special_ , _new_ feelings—”

Before Hajime knows what he’s doing, his palm is slamming into the locker next to Oikawa’s head with a resounding _bang_.

Hajime’s eyes are closed.

Oikawa has fallen silent.

Outside the closed door, there are footsteps that become louder until the door opens and Matsukawa is popping his head in. “You guys are taking too long, Coach is getting—”

Hajime storms past him, bag slung over his shoulder, school clothes a crumpled hasty mess in his arms, his expression carved out of stone as he heads directly towards the school gates.

Oikawa hides his eyes under a shadow.

His voice is thinner than paper when he says, “I’ll be right out, Mattsun. Tell Irihata-san that Iwa-chan wasn't feeling well and went home.”

 


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a vaguely connected drabble on hajime's feelings and parents

_Tooru is beautiful._

Hajime doesn’t say this out loud. He convinces himself that it’s because it’d inflate Tooru’s ego to an unbearable degree…but the truth is: it embarrasses Hajime how much he means it.

_Tooru is beautiful. The sky is blue. The grass is green._

These were facts. Someone’s glowing face shouldn’t be a basic fact, subjectivity and all that, but for Hajime, there has never been and will never be a time Hajime doesn’t see Tooru smile and feel like heart skip two beats. There will never be doubt about if Hajime thinks Tooru looks cute in his new lip “balm” (he knows its gloss, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t know why Oikawa thinks he would), if the smooth curve of Oikawa’s hand doesn’t entrance him, if his eyes—

He could go on.

And this embarrasses him. Always has, so he hastily covers up how much he cares with shallow-hearted aggression, a bad habit, he knows, he’s working on it, but he might care so much it’s—

Scary.

It’s scary thinking about how much he cares about Oikawa sometimes.

And it was even scarier when he realized other best friends didn’t feel this way about their best friends. The shoulder rubbing, rough housing camaraderie, sure Hajime had that with Tooru, but the unbearable ache of being away from him, the burning desire to protect him, at all costs, from _anything_ , himself included, Hajime just—

Didn’t mean to feel this way. He just. Always has. Always _did_.

He probably always _will_.

So he does what any healthy teenager would: he represses it. He represses it and represses it and pushes it so far down he’s convinced himself it was a fleeting phase. He can’t let Tooru know. He can never let Tooru know because, what if—

No.

He doesn’t let himself think about that.

But right now, sitting on the porch of his own home two hours earlier than he should’ve been, Hajime lets himself think all the things he usually represses.

And he lets himself feel the fear, the bone-deep teeth-aching fear, that his feelings have never been and will never be—

“Hajime?” His mother is wearing her blue spring hat with the yellow and white floral pattern. In the back of his mind, beyond the fog and numb of whatever shock Tooru’s words induced, he thinks Oikawa bought it for her last Mother’s Day. “What are you doing home so early? Where’s Tooru?”

 _Where’s Tooru_. “Hajime-kun!” Oh. His dad climbs out of the car’s opposite side. “I’m home early so I took Oka-san to the— Are you alright?”

Hajime lifts his head from where is is buried in his arms.  “Mm,” is the response they get.

Ushering him inside with looks exchanged, Mr. and Mrs. Iwaizumi have seen this expression before. Tooru and Hajime have been friends ten years after all and neither of them are exactly pacifists so the fights have spanned thick and thin, from accidentally deflated volleyballs to calling Godzilla dumb.

So Iwaizumi-san cooks her son three plates full of agedashi tofu and Iwaizumi-kun opens up two small cans of extra-Lite beer and they sit together at the table and wait.

Hajime is upstairs, cleaning himself up. He is, in fact, staring at himself in the mirror and attempting to rub some kind of emotion into his face. He knows his parents know he is upset and he knows he _could_ tell them why. They had the Talk on sexuality et cetera a while back and Hajime was caught surfing— the— well, it’s not important to go into the details. But suffice to say, they know Hajime is gay. They know Tooru. They just…don’t know…the middle part.

Which is understandable because _Hajime_ didn’t know the middle part until like. A few months ago. A year now? Maybe. He and Tooru have always been close so maybe they would—

He shakes these thoughts off. Picks up the glass of water for rinsing his mouth, fills it and dumps it on his head.

Hajime is still drying his hair off when he comes downstairs.

“Hajime, the food is getting cold!” He knows his mom always lies about that to get him to rush, so it brings a small smile to his face as he enters their kitchen.

His eyebrows steadily lift up as he sees his dad hand _him_ the extra-Lite instead of his mom.

“Oto-san, you remember I’m still 17 right?”

His father waves a hand at him and clucks, “17, 18, I don’t get it. In my town, I had my first beer at 14 with my father, grandfather _and_ great-grandfather…”

And Hajime understands that his parents aren’t going to press him so he smiles as he sits and hands the can to his mother instead.

It's at almost half-past ten, a few hours after some TV (they'd specially DVR'd the latest Kamen Rider Fourze for him) with his parents and all his homework for a week done (it was _amazin_ g how much three hours freed up), that his mother gently knocks on the door of his room. “Come in!”

She sees her son lying backwards on his bed, a volleyball tight in his hands. She softly sides next to his head and gently strokes Hajime’s hair. “I don’t want to pry, Haje-chan, but…”

Hajime sighs and shakes his head. “You're not. No, no, I’m…I’ll…I want to…”

“It is Tooru, right?”

He nods. “And he did something to upset you?”

He nods again. “What…kind of thing?”

Hajime feels his mouth go dry.  He looks at the ceiling and hears, _You think I don’t **see** it?_

“A…talking thing.” He feels bad: for not being able to talk around this lump in his throat...for not being able to confess his feelings. For having his feelings found out after being buried and  _Tooru just—_

 But. If he can’t even. Himself. How can he—

His mother gently tugs on his ear. “I can feel it when you think too hard, Haje-chan. Don’t worry. Oka-san just wants you to be happy, and talk to her when you’re ready. Understood?”

Hajime squeezed her hands in his. He feels a rush of warmth, tiding the other feelings away. He’s lucky: he hase the best parents in the world. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And please,” she laughs. “Try to look a little better just so Oto-san doesn’t try to give you anymore beer or beer stories.”

Hajime promises he will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like is it just me or is it insurmountably canon that Hajime must have the most gentle, kind, loving and supportive parents or


End file.
